this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
516 points (97.3% liked)

Technology

59568 readers
4064 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Automotive research firm finds that Tesla has higher frequency of deadly accidents than any other car brand

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 24 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (15 children)

I wonder if they have the data broken down by propulsion technology rather than manufacturer. One thing about Teslas and other luxury electric cars is that they have insane amounts of horsepower and instant torque. If you buy a Model S to schlep the kids around and are expecting it to behave like a minivan you'll be really surprised what happens if you floor it.

I'm curious to know if this trend is the same for other high-powered electric cars like the Hummer or Rivian. Cars that go that fast used to be limited to supercars, not large and widespread SUVs and pickups.

(Note this is not saying electric is bad or we shouldn't use it. But maybe manufacturers could ease up on the mo powah baby.)

But I also agree with the article that it could be related to their claims of "full self driving" because people might trust it too much and just not pay attention, or have it fail to detect something.

[–] Morphit 13 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah the Rolling Stone article is written really weirdly. I don't think it's technically wrong anywhere but it reads really misleadingly when you compare it to the actual report.

Like it leads with "the group identified the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model Y as two of the most dangerous cars" - meaning they are in the list - at sixth and twenty first places respectively. The mix is really weird though. As you mention the top of the list is cars like the Chevy Corvette and Porsche 911, but also things like the Mitsubishi Mirage and a load of Kia models. So it seems like there's a lot to interpret there.

Certainly it's somewhat damning that despite the driver assistant technology, these models are not particularly safer. But I think other manufactures have a wide range of vehicles at different price points that also vary in safety, which brings their averages below Tesla's in the final rankings.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you for linking to the actual report. It makes a lot more sense. Since they're basing it on occupant fatalities it makes sense that smaller cars are deadlier, since they'll suffer more damage in an accident. It's also interesting that the small SUVs are more deadly, which I attribute to the low mass and high CoG leading to more frequent rollovers.

[–] Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 5 points 18 hours ago

Aha, occupant fatalities. I was hoping to find out if they were measuring people inside the cars mentioned or people in other cars or pedestrians or all of the above

[–] Morphit 3 points 19 hours ago

As a note, it looks like the data they used is publicly available from the NHTSA. They mention that "models not in production as of the 2024 model year, and low-volume models were removed from further analysis." I wonder where the Hummer and Rivian show up there since they are not mentioned in the report whatsoever.

load more comments (12 replies)